On Worldbuilding and Rehearsal
As theater-makers, we are always in the process of making new worlds. We engage our brains and bodies in the willing suspension of disbelief—that is, we agree to stop disbelieving for a time, and to start believing something imaginary. Then we ask an audience to join us in doing the same. In essence, we play pretend together.
Pretend we’re all underwater and the world might be ending soon
Pretend we’re astronauts meeting our foremothers across time in outer space
Pretend her family and my family hate each other, and this little vial contains poison
This might seem silly or frivolous. Who spends their time making things up, and asking others to believe them for an hour or two? Who treats that as essential work? And in times when the truth is so complicated, multi-layered, and tangled, who needs a play?
Yet those of us who do this know it’s not frivolous. To build imaginary worlds, we’re taking some of the elements of the everyday place and rearranging them just so. We’re like scientists, performing experiments with the things we know, to invent the things we haven’t imagined yet. We keep asking questions.
What if I was…?
What if you were…?
Could we…?
And sometimes we get a glimpse of something better, a world beyond our current limitations. Two people look across a crowded masquerade ball and fall irresponsibly in love with each other. A band of intercosmic explorers experience zero gravity for the first time. A group of underwater creatures hold hands to wait for the end of the world together, and then find that the world does not end after all.
Worlds being built anew have the advantage of not needing to adhere to old rules. They could contain space for anybody. All bodies tell stories, all inner lives contain rich experiences, all identities add something more inviting to the landscape. Imaginary vistas, after all, can better accommodate fresh behaviors, concepts, and personalities. New worlds have the potential to play out ages-old conflict and still get to the curtain call.
As dreamers of better worlds, it may be particularly painful for us to be stuck in this one, where the same stale, tired tropes keep playing out. The same old fears keep being stoked. The same sparkly, wondrous, precious people keep getting othered and used for political gain. We know stories of tyrants. We know the tales where riches are valued more than life. We’re steeped in the narrative of the downtrodden grabbing flags and rising up.
We know that we cannot imagine our way out of very real restrictions, of laws that codify hate and amplify fear. This is not pretending things are dire; we know they are. We know that we and the people we love so much are hurting because of consequences that will be material. We want to wrap our arms around everyone and everything that matters.
When characters in a musical find themselves under this kind of strain, they sing. And when that’s not enough, they dance. We too can sometimes imagine more fantastical things because we are under such pressure. We might confuse those who don’t have this capacity for wonder—or we might distract them, enchant them, draw them into our world rather than feeling limited by the restrictions of theirs.
So, here we are: underwater, holding hands, waiting for the end of the world. If it comes, we know how to go down together because we’ve rehearsed it. If it doesn’t, let’s gather, mix up some things from the old world and build a better thing together. Let’s suspend our rightly earned disbelief in this troubled place, and believe we might still build something more just, more beautiful.
We see each of you in your unique artistic brilliance.
We love you for exactly who you are right now.
We are certain that a better world is possible through you.